A great deal of data has to be configured for a communication device before the communication device can operate. The data is necessary for startup and normal operation of the communication device; the communication device can operate effectively only when the required data is configured correctly. As the data configured in communication device is complex and huge, the communication device has a high requirement for performance of the configuration database. In order to configure data for a communication device, the configuration data, first, has to be organized in an effective way to support efficient data manipulation (includes addition, deletion, modification, query); in addition, the data configuration shall be real-time, i.e., the change of configuration data shall come into effect and be processed quickly in the entire communication device; furthermore, the rate of occupation of the configuration data in such resources as system memory, CPU, channel, etc. shall be low as far as possible.
Usually, a communication device comprises a plurality of types of functional modules, and different functional modules implement different service functions; in such a communication device, a small distributed database system can be implemented to store, manage, and configure data. Usually, in a communication device, the configuration data system comprises two types of configuration data units: configuration data centralized unit and configuration data distributed unit. Wherein, the configuration data module in the main control module of the communication device is the configuration data centralized unit, which contains all configuration data of the entire device; said data can be obtained through files storing the data in the communication device; the configuration data modules on service modules of the communication device are the configuration data distributed units, which only contain part of the configuration data and obtain required data through the configuration data centralized unit. During the data configuration process, because different functional modules compose a communication device, these functional modules require obviously different configuration data for operation. The data configuration for the same type of functional modules comprises the following two cases: first, each module only cares about its own configuration data and needn't to know configuration data information in the other same type of modules; second, each module needs to know the configuration information in it and the other same type of modules.
Presently, usually the data configuration in a communication device is performed in the second way with the following method: perform configuration according to the types of modules of the communication device; the configuration data in the configuration data distributed units in the same type of modules is identical; in the distributed units, the configuration data is usually accurate down to data table level, i.e., if a data table is defined as existed in one certain type of module, the data table will exist in all the type of modules, and the content of the data table is identical. During startup of service modules in the communication device, the configuration data centralized unit in the main control module distributes all configuration data for this type of the module to the configuration data distributed units of this type of each module; during the data configuration operation (addition, deletion, modification) for any one of this type of modules, synchronization shall be performed for this type of all modules.
When the data is configured in the first way, a great deal of redundant data will occur during module startup and configuration data synchronization, as all the data configuration is performed by module type.
As concluded from the above, the prior art has the following disadvantages:
1. when the configuration is performed by module type during the startup of the communication device, there may be unit-irrelevant redundant configuration data in the configuration data distributed units of the modules due to the different service functions of the modules, which results in waste of device memory; in addition, as redundant data is configured, the time required for distribution of the configuration data during the startup is longer, resulting in low response speed during the startup.
2. Since unit-irrelevant configuration data may be synchronized to the same type of configuration data distributed units of the individual modules during data manipulation, the channels is occupied more, and the configuration data distributed units occupy more CPU capacity and memory, resulting in degraded performance of the entire configuration database system and increased device cost.
3. The data configuration is poor in flexibility. Since the modules in the communication device have different service functions, the configuration data distributed units in each module have different requirements for content of data; in the prior art, the configuration data can only be uniformly distinguished by module type with poor flexibility.